What portfolio management tool do you use?

[EastWest Gal]

Quote:

Originally Posted by euro Quicken. I'm in the process of trying Personal Capital, but have run into some snags

I'm seriously looking into Personal Capital as we bought the new Quicken for Mac which mostly works well but there is one serious snag we have. So what problems have you had with Personal Capital? (Other than they want to manage your money for a high fee.)

[FIREd]

I used Quicken and Morningstar in the past, now I use Excel (which works fine for my very simple buy-and-hold portfolio).

[Bir48die]

Unlike many on this forum I use two different personal investment managers (not financial advisors). I am one of those who really like the idea of someone else managing my money. It has nothing to do with my financial skill set as I'm as well read as anyone and have a financial background. However I love the idea of not having the responsibility of managing my portfolio.

[audreyh1]

Quicken to get the big picture of all account balances, then use a spreadsheet to do any portfolio computations such as withdrawals and rebalancing.

[capjak]

Quote:

Originally Posted by EastWest Gal I'm seriously looking into Personal Capital as we bought the new Quicken for Mac which mostly works well but there is one serious snag we have. So what problems have you had with Personal Capital? (Other than they want to manage your money for a high fee.)

The only issue I have had is that sometimes the accounts are not available to link or the credit card I add does not work. I contact them via email and have fixed it within a day or even as long as a week to get it linked. Sometimes the account does not update and you are required to add your password for the account. These are rare instances as I have used it for about 9 months, excellent for tracking investments/income/expenses/investment allocation etc....

[exnavynuke]

I use USAA and Personal Capital. USAA links all my accounts well, but it is massively lacking in tools to analyze the accounts accurately. Personal Capital does a great job of tracking things and providing analytic tools for my accounts, by my ADP 401k isn't supported for automatic updates so I have to manually update that account when funds are bought/sold. If not for that, I'd be very pleased with Personal Capital.

[Carpediem]

Quote:

Originally Posted by capjak The only issue I have had is that sometimes the accounts are not available to link or the credit card I add does not work. I contact them via email and have fixed it within a day or even as long as a week to get it linked. Sometimes the account does not update and you are required to add your password for the account. These are rare instances as I have used it for about 9 months, excellent for tracking investments/income/expenses/investment allocation etc....

Those are the issues I experienced with Personal Capital too. Plus, it would not import my 401k no matter what I did or tried. I finally gave up on P.C.

[T-Minus]

I use Quicken to track investment lots and a hybrid of Excel Spreadsheet and Personal Capital for detailed slice 'n dice analysis. I'm in the process of evaluating P.C. for our needs, so I run it in parallel with my trusty spreadsheet - once I decide which one works best for us, I'll quit the other.

[W2R]

Quote:

Originally Posted by CountryGal Given you have investments across multiple providers/accounts, what do you use to manage them all as a whole? Do you provide the tool account information to get into these accounts? ...I have a huge issue with trust in terms of security of giving them any log in info and wondering what others do. TX!

I just use Excel (really Open Office since I do not want to pay for software that I can get for free). Bear in mind that I am a long term "Excel Junkie" and I actually love recording things in my spreadsheets. I do my analyses and graphs there too, since for me that is easiest and most fun. And, since I did them myself, I know exactly how the computations were done so to me that is a "plus".

I have taxable and Roth IRA at Vanguard, and the TSP and my bricks'n'mortar bank accounts. That's 5 numbers needed from Vanguard for my 5 funds, 1 from the TSP, and 1 from the bank.

So, each day I log into Vanguard, the TSP, and my bank, and copy the 7 total numbers that I obtain into my master retirement/investment spreadsheets in Excel. For me it takes almost no time at all. Piece o' cake.

[Midpack]

Quote:

Originally Posted by W2R I just use Excel (really Open Office since I do not want to pay for software that I can get for free). Bear in mind that I am a long term "Excel Junkie" and I actually love recording things in my spreadsheets. I do my analyses and graphs there too, since for me that is easiest and most fun. And, since I did them myself, I know exactly how the computations were done so to me that is a "plus".

+1. I am a long term "Excel Junkie" but one of the main reasons I use Excel for managing all our finances is I know every underlying assumption and calculation that goes into it. And I can change as needed, though the changes so far have been cosmetic. I sometimes use free software packages to double check myself, but that's as far as I go with other software. If you use other software, whether free or paid, there's a black box aspect to it I can't be comfortable with. YMMV

[Gotadimple]

Any portfolio manager needs to account for all the places you have investment money. Most brokerages have an online tool - but it only analyzes the investments you have with them. Morningstar does provide a free tool where you can include everything, but you need to update it as balances, #shares, etc, change. Plus it gives a good analysis on asset allocation in it's X-Ray tool.

I do use the Portfolio tool at Schwab but only as a guide. Everything else is in Excel, or Google docs (whatever flavor you prefer) where I can see the entire asset allocation and make choices about rebalancing, doing a what-if analysis.

- Rita

[trixs]

Excel. I create a new workbook every year which has changed drastically over time. What is really interesting is going back a decade and seeing how things looked.

Out of curiosity, how does everyone else update the current prices. Personally I use the following:

Quote:

=NUMBERVALUE(WEBSERVICE("http://finance.yahoo.com/d/quotes.csv?s="&G90&"&f=l1"))

Where G90 is the ticker...

[Blue Collar Guy]

i use the old pencil and paper method, i have a 2008 date book, every year in the begging of january i go and check all the balances, my 2 457 accounts, my checkbook, vanguard, td ameritrade, and money stashed under the mattress so thats 6 entries, takes about 30 minutes, most of the time is spent trying to remember the passwords. i first retired in the height of the great recession, so i never looked at balances too depressing, no re-balancing, just dollar cost averaging , i dont change anything so i dont need to look them up much

[nun]

I have an Excel spreadsheet......but I've basically stopped using it since I retired. Before ER every month I would transfer the numbers from my 457, Vanguard and TIAA accounts and periodically rebalance and track my total return etc. Now I just reinvest dividends and don't really bother to rebalance or worry about my AA. The AA given in my signature is around 6 months old so I imagine I now have more equities.

[T-Minus]

Quote:

Originally Posted by trixs ...Out of curiosity, how does everyone else update the current prices....

I have a Google Sheets document that lists all my marketable securities and automatically updates their prices at the end of the day. When I want to update my Excel document, I open the Google Sheet, copy the prices, then paste THE VALUES into my Excel input area. I'm still considering this, but it eliminates the need to manually enter ten values every day.

[trixs]

Quote:

Originally Posted by T-Minus I have a Google Sheets document that lists all my marketable securities and automatically updates their prices at the end of the day. When I want to update my Excel document, I open the Google Sheet, copy the prices, then paste THE VALUES into my Excel input area. I'm still considering this, but it eliminates the need to manually enter ten values every day.

You can use the formula I posted above. Press ctrl+alt+F9 and excel will automatically download the current price.

[donheff]

Google Sheets with Google Finance functions to track current value and YTD growth by fund.

[Hermit]

I use Quicken to track daily expenses and the portfolio. My 401k updates are pulled from the investment company into Quicken. Other investment accounts get updated manually. I use Quicken to monitor allocations. I use an Excel spreadsheet to show planned asset locations and movements throughout retirement much along the lines of ORP. It calculates annual taxes, RMD/QCDs with transfers to taxable accounts, charities, etc. I built the thing, but I don't remember how the formulas work, I have to study it a bit when I do the annual updates in January. I have many more small spread sheets all of which are linked into an overall Word financial plan along with many snapshots from Quicken reports. It is all set up so DD can step in when the time comes.

As Quicken moves to a high-price luxury, I may move everything to an account entry tool and build some more spreadsheets or use a database for analysis. I have not really done detailed analytical spread sheeting or SQL for many years. I'm not sure if my retired brain is up to it!

[savory]

Personal Capital for me.

[Ian S]

Personal Capital appears to lack a function to download your data. I prefer SigFig which does have that ability. However, the latter is really only geared for investment monitoring but that's of most interest to me.